Ontario politics

How to look at polling data and vote strategically: �鶹��Ƶ statistician offers insight

ullahnor — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 17:30:12 +0000

How to look at polling data and vote strategically: �鶹��Ƶ statistician offers insight

ullahnor Mon, 06/04/2018 - 13:30

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Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne takes questions after the most recent debate. She had hoped for a bump in polling, but on Saturday she acknowledged the election has been lost (photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Dee Keilholz

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City & Culture

Faculty of Arts & Science

Ontario politics

statistics

On June 7, Ontario voters will cast their vote and choose a new government, and based on Kathleen Wynne's comments over the weekend, the Liberals may lose official party status.

In April, polling data indicated that roughly half of Ontarians have made up their mind. That leaves the other half still undecided and with an important decision to make, especially given the projected neck and neck race between Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party (PC) and the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Public support for Wynne has nosedived since the campaign started, and recent polls have suggested even longtime strongholds could be lost for the Liberals. In Ontario, parties need at least eight seats in the legislature to be formally recognized. On Saturday, Wynne acknowledged that she will no longer be premier after the election, encouraging voters to elect Liberal candidates to prevent the NDP or PCs from securing a majority.

Jeff Rosenthal (below), professor of statistical sciences in the Faculty of Arts & Science, talks to �鶹��Ƶ's Dee Keilholz about whether we can trust the latest polls and whether there's ways to maximize the impact of our votes.

Can we trust the polls – in this election and generally speaking?

Generally speaking, I’d say ‘yes.’ Polls are not as far off as many people think. If you can take a truly random sample of people, even if you just sample 1,000 people out of 9 million voters, you still get quite accurate results. If you poll 1,000 people, the margin of error is down to about three per cent.

However, the challenge with polls and their accuracy is that it is really difficult to get a truly random sample. What if, for example, the people who respond to pollsters are also more likely to vote for a certain party? What if certain age groups are more likely to respond? Do people tell pollsters the truth? That’s what leads to biases and that's when polls can run into trouble.

Polls are a great illustration of the power of randomness. In fact, my main research area, Monte Carlo algorithms, uses this same kind of randomness to estimate quantities which are too complicated to compute directly.

What have the polls been predicting for the Ontario elections?

In this election, the polls project a close race between the NDP and PCs. The Conservatives will probably do better in their seat count than their vote count, so it's quite possible that the NDP wins more votes but the Conservatives get more seats. It is true, though, that seat projections are complicated, and there have been cases in the past where the forecasters got it wrong.

In the 2011 federal election, for example, forecasters almost unanimously predicted that it is extremely unlikely that the Conservative party would win a majority – but they did. I wrote a paper about this, suggesting a more accurate seat projection method.

So what should voters do to get a clear picture?

It’s smart to look at a bunch of polls, instead of just one. The easiest way to do that is to visit polling sites that take multiple sources into account. I recommend Calculated Politics or the CBC Poll Tracker.

What kind of polling data should voters pay special attention to if they want to vote strategically?

In Canada, we have a first-past-the-post system. Whoever wins in a riding takes that seat. That means strategic voting can really have an effect.

If you want to vote strategically, you should pay attention to the projection for your riding. Let’s say you want party x to lose and party y to win, but you’re also OK with voting for party z. You should find out if party y or z is most likely to win in your riding and vote for whoever is ahead.

Unfortunately, projections for ridings can be a bit tenuous, because they are based on the latest provincial polling and results of past elections in that riding, rather than actual polling data from that riding. However, I still think this is a reasonable approach – and your best bet if you choose to vote strategically.

What effect is voter turnout going to have on this election?

If the decision to vote is independent of political leanings, voter turnout has no effect because you still get the same relative proportions. However, if groups with certain political beliefs are more likely to vote – or not to vote – than others, that can indeed make a difference.

We saw that in the 2015 federal election. Voter turnout for 18- to 24-year-olds went from 39 per cent in the 2011 election to 57 per cent in 2015 because Justin Trudeau really connected with the younger demographic – and he won.

In this election, it appears that older people are more likely to support the Conservatives and are also more likely to vote than younger people. Younger people are more likely to support the NDP but less likely to vote. So, voter turnout is an important issue in this election.

Can the upcoming provincial election give us any clues as to how the 2019 federal election might turn out?

The Liberals in Ontario are expected to do quite badly in the upcoming Ontario election. It's not clear exactly why this is. Voter fatigue is one possible cause.

The question is will that affect the Liberal Party of Canada? Some of the federal polls suggest that the popularity of the federal party among Ontario voters is somewhat down, and that there is going to be a ripple effect. My guess is that the Ontario election won’t have a lasting impact. By the time the next federal election rolls around, this provincial election will already be ancient history.

An NDP victory in Ontario is a real possibility: �鶹��Ƶ expert

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 25 May 2018 14:05:19 +0000

An NDP victory in Ontario is a real possibility: �鶹��Ƶ expert

noreen.rasbach Fri, 05/25/2018 - 10:05

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Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath is greeted by local candidate Doly Begum during a campaign visit earlier this month in the GTA (photo by Bernard Weil/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

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At the start of the Ontario provincial election, which unofficially began when Doug Ford was narrowly chosen in March to lead the province’s Progressive Conservatives, most pundits and analysts predicted a two-horse race, pitting Ford against Liberal incumbent Kathleen Wynne.

Many felt, based on the stark choice on display – combined with the Liberals seemingly poaching key NDP policy initiatives – that New Democrat Andrea Horwath would be starved of media coverage and political relevancy before ultimately being cut down by a strategic voting movement that would unite behind Wynne to stop Ford.

What a difference a few weeks makes.

Instead, Horwath’s NDP has momentum after first establishing itself firmly in second place ahead of the Liberals, and now by challenging Ford’s Conservatives for first place. Recent polls from Abacus Data, Maclean’s-Pollara, and Ipsos have placed the NDP and the Conservatives within a point of one another, both well ahead of Wynne’s Liberals, who sit as low as 18 per cent.

And while other pollsters and aggregators like the CBC Poll Tracker see the Conservative lead as being slightly bigger, every major analyst agrees that the momentum is with Horwath and the NDP, while the Tories seem to be on a bit of a downward shift. In fact, two of three recent polls give Horwath a slight lead over Ford, brother of the late Toronto mayor, Rob Ford.

What’s behind Horwath’s momentum?

There are two key questions here: First, what’s fuelling the NDP’s momentum? And second, will it result in Horwath winning on June 7 to become only the second NDP premier in Ontario history to lead the province?

In broad terms, Horwath’s rise in the polls can be explained by three overarching issues.

First is her general popularity, especially when compared to Ford and Wynne. This has been evident throughout the election, but some recent data shows that while Wynne and Ford both have negative popularity numbers (-47 and -20 respectively), Horwath enjoys a +29 rating that is increasing as more voters tune into the election. Conversely, Ford’s numbers are slipping as more voters become familiar with him.

Ontario PC leader Doug Ford makes an announcement during a campaign stop on a farm in the town of Lakeshore, Ont. on May 23 (photo by Geoff Robins/The Canadian Press)

The second factor is the party’s platform, which is not only ambitious in its scope, but has been fully costed and vetted by former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page.

Conversely, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have released a platform, and while Wynne can claim that the recent Liberal budget is in effect the party’s platform, the Conservatives have offered scant details about what their specific objectives are. While they have recently promised a platform due a couple days before the election, there is no definitive sense for what a Ford government would do.

Generally, the Tories have promised major tax cuts without cutting jobs and services by finding billions “in efficiencies.” This has led many people, including economist Mike Moffat, to suggest that it is likely Ford will create the largest deficits, whereas Howath’s NDP, even after accounting for a recent $1.4 billion platform budget error, is the party most likely to run smaller deficits.

It could therefore be the case that, for many fiscally prudent voters, the NDP is considered potentially better at minding the public purse than the tax-cutting Conservatives.

Strong in debates

The final factor has been Horwath’s campaign trail performance. Starting with the first televised debate, Horwath has been seen as the sharpest candidate, and has also been perceived as offering a positive message, especially when juxtaposed with Ford and Wynne’s “bickering.”

This was followed up by an interesting moment in a debate on Northern Ontario issues in Parry Sound, Ont., where a picture of the three leaders showed Ford and Wynne’s podiums filled with notes, while Horwath spoke without any.

Horwath, Wynne and Ford take part in the second of three leaders’ debates in Parry Sound, Ont., on May 11. Horwath’s podium is absent of notes (photo by Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

A minor factor to be sure, but that image helped to craft a narrative that Horwath spoke with passion and sincerity on the key issues, and not from a series of pre-baked talking points.

But the real question, as noted above, is if Horwath and company can keep up the momentum for the next couple weeks and actually form a government. Right now, with recent polls painting the race as a dead heat between Horwath and Ford, the advantage still lies with the Conservatives.

In fact, according to Global News, Ford could win a narrow majority government even after finishing in second place.

This is for a host of reasons.

First, Ford is doing very well among older voters, who tend to be more reliable in terms of getting to the polls. Second, the Conservatives have a more efficient distribution of voters, meaning that they have support spread across ridings, while the NDP’s support is more concentrated within certain ridings and regions. Third, the Ford Conservatives are very strong in both the Greater Toronto Area and what is known as the 905 – the heavily populated communities that surround Toronto.

This is the province’s most seat-rich region, and it is powering the current Conservative lead. That’s why, according to seat simulators like Too Close to Call, the NDP would need to win by several points to win a plurality or majority of seats.

Still a path to NDP victory

This still doesn’t mean Horwath and the NDP can’t find a path to victory. If their momentum continues, even at a slower pace than we’ve seen, they may establish a statistically significant lead on Ford and company.

Furthermore, the 407 data scandal – in which it’s alleged that upwards of 29 Conservative candidates used illegally obtained voter information to win riding nominations – is still percolating, and there are ongoing investigations by both law enforcement agencies and Elections Ontario. This could cause real trouble for Ford and push the Tories down in the polls.

Just as interesting are the continuing effects of strategic and bandwagon voting. In the aforementioned Abacus data, they found that once voters saw that the NDP, and not the Liberals, were in second place, they accelerated their move from Wynne to Horwath. And given that voters pay more attention as election day approaches, this trend could continue.

Again, the NDP likely needs to beat Ford by a few points to win the seat count, but if they can continue to pull in strategic Liberal supporters, and flip a few more soft Conservative voters, the New Democrats could easily build a more stable lead.

Will that happen? Only the next couple weeks will tell. But one thing is nearly certain, in my view: On June 7, Ontario will have a new premier, and there is a decent chance it will be Andrea Horwath.

Christo Aivalis is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral researcher in the University of Toronto's department of history. He is a member of the New Democratic Party, and is on his riding association executive.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.